With Patrick Mahomes being Texas Tech’s No. 2 quarterback, the Red Raiders need the true freshman from Whitehouse to get up to speed on the offense as soon as possible.

Good thing Mahomes’ first year of college happened to be 2014.

Under a new rule, the NCAA allowed football coaches to meet with players for up to two hours a week this summer. That meant Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury could do more than smile and wave at Mahomes as he passed through the building.

He could actually teach him football stuff.

“We’d go three days a week and we’d do about 30 to 40 minutes,” Kingsbury said. “Get him in there and watch film, study scripts and do it all as much as you can do on the board.

“It really helped him a lot, and he’ll be able to come in that day one in camp and actually have a clue what he’s doing.”

West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen offered “kudos to the NCAA” for allowing coaches to provide hands-on instruction the last couple of months.

“We can have team meetings,” Holgorsen said, “we can have position meetings and then we can get outside and do small things with them. Everybody’s pretty much doing the same thing.”

Coaches being able to meet with players during the summer, even briefly, is another step in the sea change for college football’s offseason. As recently as 20 years ago, most players went home when the school year ended. They worked out on their own, if they felt like it, with a program sent along by the strength and conditioning coach.

More and more stayed on campus once the NCAA permitted athletic departments to fund athletes’ summer-school costs. Tech started paying summer-school tuition for all athletes in 1999, and soon nearly all Red Raiders football players spent most of the summer in Lubbock.

However, their workouts were under the supervision of the strength and conditioning staff with the football coaches forbidden from any meaningful interaction.

Now, even with the limited two-hours-a-week sessions, coaches are hoping their first-timers will be better prepared in August and September.

“I think it’s going to help a lot,” Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops said. “Particularly the guys that are new, the young freshmen or junior-college guys that are new to your program, it’s going to help them be more prepared early in camp.

“Terminology and technique even, you can show on tape. They’ll relate and get it quicker in the first few days now that they’ve already heard the same things.”

Stoops said Sooners coaches worked the sessions around players’ classes “just to go over some film and things like that.”

At West Virginia, Holgorsen said the Mountaineers used the time allotted two days a week for an hour at a time.

“It’s a very structured team setting,” Holgorsen said. “We’ll have a team meeting and then immediately break up into small groups and be able to coach ball off of film.”

Tech needs Mahomes to be game ready because the Red Raiders have zero experienced backups behind starter Davis Webb, but he’s not the only one who could benefit by the loosened offseason restrictions.

About a quarter of Tech’s signing class consisted of junior-college defensive and offensive linemen. Tech coaches thought the face-to-face summer instruction would be important for them, too.

“I think in the past, those first two weeks, those true freshmen and new jucos spent just trying to figure it out and couldn’t really compete for the position,” Kingsbury said. “Now actually knowing the system, they’re going to be able to come in from day one and compete against those veteran guys, so it’s helped in that aspect.”